A Strange and Ancient Name (24 page)

“How would you know . . . ah, yes. Your cousin must be there, too.” The woman bit her lip. “You’ll take Alliar with you, of course. And—me.”

“No!”

“Yes. What, are you worried about? My reputation?” she mocked. “Surely that’s been damaged enough already. Look you, maybe it wasn’t one of your wondrous Faerie love-matches, but Gilbert is my husband! I’m not going to wait home like some poor little creature out of the songs to find out if I’ve become a widow. Besides,” Matilde added fiercely, eyes glinting with pain, “I’m not an heir, only a wife, and possibly a—a barren one, too. Thibault won’t dare harm me, but I don’t make much of a bargaining counter, either. Oh come, we’ve delayed long enough!”

Hauberin had been thinking more of Serein than the merely human Thibault. But Matilde was a free, rational being. And Serein would be just as dangerous whether or not she was there. The prince held up a hand in surrender. “So be it.”

###

They rode that day into night, hardly speaking, and made such camp as they could, hardly speaking. Sitting before their small fire, Hauberin glanced at Matilde, who was huddled into herself, eyes shadowed and remote.

“Lady? Are you well?”

She nodded curtly.

“Ah come, what is it? You’ve not spoken more than a word all day. This is surely more than mere worry for your husband.”

She looked at him. “They didn’t mean a thing to you, did they?”

“They? Who? Ah, those dead men?” Hauberin held up a helpless hand. “What should they mean? I never knew them.”

“You killed them!”

“Oh, I did not! Look you, don’t try to make me into one of your guilt-ridden human knights. Yes, I am sorry for the waste of life, but those three were merely unfortunate enough to be in the way of erupting Power, and there’s the end of it.”

“You would have had them buried in unhallowed ground.”

“Unhallowed.” Hauberin considered the word for a time, rolling it about in his mind, hunting its meaning. “Unclean, you mean?” He paused again, considering. “Unsacred, because it wasn’t within the boundaries of one of your churches? How absurd!”

“Absurd!”

“Lady, the earth is itself incredibly Powerful, far and far removed from any petty little mortal ideas of good or evil. Whatever foulness human’s work may leave a shadow on the surface, may even stain the soil, but they cannot possibly change its inner nature. The earth cannot be unclean.”

Matilde was studying him quizzically. “You really
are
alien, aren’t you?” she murmured, and shuddered.

At a loss, Hauberin glanced at Alliar, who sat half in shadow, a golden statue with glowing golden eyes, and asked,
“You’re not going to help me out of this, are you?”

“How? If you’re alien to her right now, then I am doubly so.”

Hauberin sighed and turned back to Matilde. “Poor lady. You’re very weary, aren’t you?”

“How should I not be?”

“I . . . know a simple spell to banish fatigue; I’ve just used it on myself and—”

“No!” she erupted. “No spells! No magic!”

“But—”

“It’s magic killed those men, magic that trapped my husband, magic that—that might even have already slain—Oh
God!”
Matilde sat for a long time with head buried in hands, then slowly straightened, eyes haunted. “No magic,” she repeated softly. “Just . . . let me be.”

Matilde turned her back on him, curling up in her cloak. Hauberin looked across her huddled form, and started.

There, barely to be seen in shadow, stood a
lutin.
Whether it was the same sprite from Nulle Part, Hauberin had no way of knowing; the creatures had as many shapes as whims.

“Small one?” he murmured in the Faerie tongue. “What would you?”

The
lutin
blinked at the sound of the language, but said nothing and did nothing but study him a long, silent while, eyes glittering in the night. Then, without warning, small, sharp teeth flashed in a quick smile and the
lutin
was gone.

“Now, what was
that
all about?”
Alliar asked silently.

Hauberin shrugged.
“Who knows? Maybe it was planning a prank. Or maybe the thing was simply curious.”
The prince glanced down at the sleeping Matilde and laughed without sound.
No magic, eh?
he thought.
I’m sorry, lady, but that hardly seems likely.

XIX

DISCOVERIES

The morning brought no strangeness with it; the
lutin
apparently had been nothing worse than curious. They ate and smoothed out their dress as best as possible, and rode on their way, and if Matilde remained remote, Hauberin told himself she had, after all, undergone a good deal recently, particularly for a human, and let it pass.

Baron Thibault’s lands looked, Hauberin mused, unkept; the hedges just a bit too overgrown, the growing crops just a little too weed-filled. What few peasants they passed in the full day of riding were sullen, barely glancing at them.

Not that we’re such elegant creatures by now. What I’d give for a change of clothing. And a long, long bath.

As much wish for a swift, happy return to Faerie. And an equally swift end to Serein and his curse.

Thibault’s squat gray castle, an ugly, unpoetic thing outlined against the golden afternoon light, was every bit as sloppy as his lands. Frowning, Hauberin noted vines on the outer walls—a lovely ladder for invaders—and hints of crumbling mortar and chipped stone. Unlike Baron Gilbert’s fortress, which had depended on its hilltop setting for additional security, this castle’s entranceway was protected by a drawn-up wooden bridge flanked by heavy watchtowers and surrounded by a stagnant ring of water (Hauberin’s memory suddenly supplied the missing word, “moat”) half-hidden by a mass of water lilies; when the wind shifted, such a reek of decaying vegetation rolled out from it the prince nearly gagged.

“Lazy housekeeping,” Alliar murmured.

Also, Hauberin thought fastidiously, an effective barrier: who would want to swim across that foulness? He sat his horse in silence for a time, sending out a delicate thread of psychic sense, searching . . . wondering if his cousin might not be doing the exact same thing. There . . . no . . . yes . . . ah, he couldn’t be sure, not with all that stone and iron interfering. At least it meant Serein couldn’t sense him, either.

“Time to raise our treaty flag,” he said.

With a wry grin, Alliar lifted the sorry thing—a scrap of a not-very-white surcoat impaled on a branch—and called out in a voice mighty as a storm wind; “Ho, the castle!”

A startled face appeared in a watchtower window. A voice called down, predictably, “Who goes there?”

Before Alliar could answer, Matilde stood in the stirrups and shouted, clear as a war trumpet, “I am Baroness Matilde, wife to Baron Gilbert de Bouvain. Tell your master I have come to speak with him.”

“My lady—”

“Now!”

The face hastily vanished.

And, a short time later, the drawbridge came creaking its slow way down. As an obsequious man-servant ushered them into the castle, Hauberin glanced admiringly at Matilde. Even in this human Realm, honesty could sometimes prove a most effective tool!

###

To Hauberin’s mild surprise, they weren’t ushered into the Great Hall, but led directly to Baron Thibault’s private solar, a room as slovenly as everything else they’d seen so far, crammed full of glittering gold plate and hunting trophies with little regard for taste. Heavy, smoke-darkened tapestries lined the walls, and chipped, elegantly patterned tiles covered the unswept floor.

Baron Thibault sat overflowing a cushioned chair beside the fireplace, gilded cup in hand.

The baron, Hauberin thought wryly, matched his surroundings: overfed, overripe, just a shade too soft for handsomeness, just a shade too richly dressed for elegance. Gold dripped from neck and fingers, and the smile he offered his visitors was equally as rich: charming and, the prince didn’t doubt, totally insincere. The slightest glaze to his eyes implied that the cup he held had been refilled more than once, but despite the wine, the faintest trace of fear still encircled him, thin as mist.

“My Lady Baroness. And gentles. Please, be seated.”

There wasn’t the slightest trace of drunkenness in Thibault’s steady voice. At his gesture, servants scuttled forward with three chairs. Matilde sat, the heart of dignity despite her by now sadly soiled riding clothes. Hauberin and Alliar perched, not at all at ease, the being watching the baron closely, the prince questing warily with his mind for traces of his cousin, finding none.

“Will you not drink with me, lady, gentles?”

Hauberin shot back to the here and now. Powers, no, he wasn’t going to share drink with this
nilethen-nichal,
this shelterer-of-an-enemy; that would be as dark as a lie—and probably more perilous. But he could hardly refuse. The prince took the proffered cup, but did not drink. Nor, he noticed, did Matilde.

“Enough courtesies, my lord,” she said. “You know why I am here.”

Baron Thibault raised a bushy brow. “No, my lady, I do not.”

“Oh, come! You have my husband.”

“I . . . what?” It was a cry of pure astonishment. And, Hauberin thought in uneasy surprise, it was far too realistic to have been feigned. “No, lady,” the baron exclaimed, still amazed, “I most certainly do not!”

“Please. Don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying! On my honor as a noble, lady, I am not lying. I do not have your husband, and I’ll swear to that on whatever holy relics you wish.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps you don’t actually have the man,” Hauberin interjected, knowing how smoothly truth could be sidestepped, “but surely you know where he can be found.”

“No, I—” Thibault froze in mid-speech, staring at the prince as though only now really seeing him. “God’s blood. The wizard.”

There was a startled hiss from Alliar. “And how would you know what I am?” Hauberin asked warily, and received a nervous flash of a smile from the baron in return. The
feel
of the human’s fear hung heavily in the air between them.

“I will be honest, Sir Wizard,” Thibault said in a rush. “I had my spies at those heathen stones. They hurried back here to tell me what had happened. And I . . .” The man’s tongue swiped quickly, uneasily, across his lips, and his voice sank to a harsh whisper. “I must speak with you, my lord. Alone.”

“I think not.”

“Oh, please, you don’t understand.” The baron lurched to his feet. “My lady, if you will excuse us for just a moment?”

Curious despite himself, Hauberin allowed himself to be herded to the far side of the solar, fighting not to show his distaste at the man’s wine-scented breath. After an apprehensive glance back at the staring Alliar, Thibault whispered urgently, “It’s about that . . . about him. Rogier.”

“Go on.”

“About Rogier, and the—the demon possessing him.” The baron mopped his brow with a precious square of silk, apparently not noticing Hauberin’s involuntary start. “My lord,” Thibault continued, “you would know more about such matters than I. But he—the demon—tried to control me, too. Believe me, I never would have done what I did, allied myself with that—with the sorcerer and—look you, Gilbert and I have never been friends, but I would never sink so low as to use sorcery . . .”

“Please, my lord baron. Get to your point.”

“Ah. Yes. I—couldn’t help myself, I found myself agreeing to things . . .”

“You seem to have free will now.” As free as the wine would allow, at any rate.

“Y-Yes. The demon lost his hold on me when I, all accidentally, was splashed with holy water by my priest.”

“Convenient.”

“Please, my lord, I’m not lying! It wasn’t an easy thing, but—my lord, I tricked the demon in Rogier’s body. I trapped him behind cold iron bars.”

“What?”

“Yes, it’s true, but I d-don’t know how much longer I can hold him there!” Thibault seemed virtually at the edge of tears, desperation quivering in his voice. “Oh please, you must help me, you can’t let him get loose again!”

Powers. It was just barely possible. Oh, not the nonsense about the holy water, of course. Serein was no demon. But he also was no skilled plotter, either; he never had been. If he really had made some mistake, if the human really had imprisoned him . . .

“What proof can you offer me?” Hauberin asked.

“Proof, proof? God’s blood, man, what do you want from me? The demon’s head?”

That would be nice,
the prince thought drily. But Thibault was continuing: “I know his name; he—he let it slip when he thought I was still under his control. And it’s a devilish name, all right, not a good Christian name at all: Serein. That’s right, and when he realized I had trapped him, he started railing to me about my not being able to hold him, because he was such a powerful demon even a prince of Faerie on a Faerie hill couldn’t kill him.” Thibault stopped, blinking owlishly. “Is that good enough?”

“Hauberin.”
Alliar’s wind-keen ears had overheard.
“You can’t believe him.”

“Serein would never have given his name to a human. Not unless he was under great strain. And who else but Serein would boast about my not having killed him? Li, I don’t dare not believe.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No. Right now Matilde is in greater need. Stay with her, my friend.”
After a moment, he felt Alliar’s reluctant agreement, and nodded. “Come, my lord baron,” Hauberin said. “Show me your captive demon.”

###

The baron led him down the winding stair to the Great Hall, steps just slightly befuddled by wine. “There. The demon’s down there, down that other stairway.” The words seemed to delight him, because he added in a singsong voice, “The dungeon’s down there, and the demon’s down there, and—”

“And you’re going down there, too,” Hauberin told him.

“No, I don’t want to—”

“Yes, you do.” The prince gave him a not-quite-gentle shove in the right direction. “That’s right, my lord. You first.”

Hauberin, thinking of what little he knew of human dungeons, had been expecting a row of dank, cramped, ugly little cells. But at the bottom of the stair, a vast vaulted area lay below the Hall: the castle cellars, somewhat dank, but smelling more of dust than cruelty. They were piled high with mysterious crates and casks, dimly lit by flickering torchlight.

The prince stopped short. “Now, who lit those torches, my lord?” he asked softly.

Thibault blinked at him, face guileless. “Why, my servants, of course. They’re always coming and going down here, getting supplies, replacing tools, and so the torches are almost always lit.”

At the far end of the open vault, a section of the cellar had been screened off by a huge iron gate. Thibault saw Hauberin stare at it, and the color faded from the human’s face. “Yes,” he whispered. “The demon’s locked behind there. You sense him, don’t you?”

No, Hauberin didn’t, not with a virtual wall of iron blocking him. But as he stalked forward at the baron’s side, every arcane sense sprang alert. And in one wild rush of awareness he knew, “Everything you’ve told me was a lie!” Furious at himself for having been so gullible, for being so of Faerie he hadn’t recognized falsehood, he spat out, “There’s no lock on that gate, he’s not your prisoner. And you—damn you!”

He backhanded the man across the face with all his strength. Baron Thibault stumbled away from him, crumpling to the floor, whimpering, “I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t think. He—he was in my mind, he made me do it.”

But Hauberin wasn’t listening. Thibault’s men were rushing at him, no innocent servants but fully armed men-at-arms, ringing him around with their swords.

I can’t use Power here, not with all this iron!

But the guards couldn’t know true magic from simple illusion, and when a bolt of fire flashed out from him to them, they believed what their eyes told them. Yelling in alarm, they staggered back, and Hauberin darted through the opened circle for the stairway—Damn! They had him cut off.

Glancing feverishly about, the prince laughed suddenly, scrambling up and up a rickety pile of crates. One guard tried climbing up after him, and Hauberin whirled, bracing himself, and kicked out, catching the man squarely in the chest and sending him crashing back to the floor. The crates swayed wildly, and Hauberin nearly fell, caught his balance, and hurriedly reached up to where a pair of torches burned smokily in their holders. Tearing them free, he hurled them down into the pile of crates, which caught with a gratifying rush of flame. He heard the baron’s frantic yelps to his men:

“The fire! Put out the fire, curse you, before the whole cellar takes!”

Hauberin leaped down into a cloud of smoke and a swirl of confusion, kicking at feet that tried to trip him, punching at hands that grabbed at him. He sprang for the stairway and started to climb, only too well aware of how painfully exposed he was just now, hearing behind him an all-too-familiar voice, Serein’s voice, shouting: “Never mind the fire, idiots! Stop him!”

Panting, the prince glanced back over his shoulder and saw an archer taking aim. He twisted frantically aside even as Serein screamed out, “No! Not iron!” knowing even as he did that there wasn’t enough time, enough room—

Hauberin felt the arrow slamming into his arm as a white-hot flash so overwhelming his mind couldn’t even interpret it as pain—

And then he was tumbling helplessly down into darkness.

###

Alliar sprang up with a cry of anguish: “Hauberin!”

Matilde scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. “What is it? What—”

“Treachery!” The being’s eyes were wild and unfocused. “I felt his mind cry out, then there was nothing—and now I can’t sense him at all!” Golden fingers clamped painfully about her wrist. “We have to find him!”

Matilde struggled futilely against the being’s strength as she was dragged along. “Alliar, wait, you’re hurting me. Alliar . . .”

But then she was crashing into the being as Alliar stopped dead at the head of the stair, faced by a solid wall of guards. “That’s right,” gasped Thibault’s voice from below. “Hold them there.” And then, to Matilde’s horror, “They know. They must die.
He
told me: there—there must be no witnesses.”

He’d gone mad, Matilde thought. And, being mad, he meant to kill them.

“The devil he will!” Matilde slapped the leading guard across the face (thankful he wasn’t helmeted), and as he staggered back in sheer surprise, she and Alliar turned as smoothly as though they’d rehearsed it and raced back into the solar.